Fatherland

“Do you think this is a game?” She’s crazier than I am. “You’re going to have to leave.” He tried to grab her, but she twisted free.

“No way.” She backed away, pointing the knife at him. “I reckon I have as much right to be here as you do. You try and throw me out and I’ll scream so loudly I’ll have every Gestapo man in Berlin hammering on that door.”

“You have a knife, but I have a gun.”

“Ah, but you daren’t use it.”

March ran his hand through his hair. He thought: You believed you were so clever, finding her, persuading her to come back. And all the time, she wanted to come. She’s looking for something … He had been an idiot.

He said: “You’ve been lying to me.”

She said: “You’ve been lying to me. That makes us even.”

This is dangerous. I beg you, you have no idea…”

“What I do know is this: my career could have ended because of what happened in this apartment. I could be fired when I get back to New York. I’m being thrown out of this lousy country, and I want to find out why.”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

“How do I know I can trust you?”

They stood like that for perhaps half a minute: he with his hand to his hair, she with the silver paper knife still pointed at him. Outside, across the Platz, a clock began to chime. March looked at his watch. It was already ten.

“We have no time for this.” He spoke quickly. “Here are the keys to the apartment. This one opens the door downstairs. This one is for the main door up here. This fits the bedside cabinet. That is a desk key. This one” — he held it up- “this, I think, is the key to a safe. Where is it?”

“I don’t know.” Seeing his look of disbelief, she added: “I swear.”

They searched in silence for ten minutes, shifting — furniture, pulling up rugs, looking behind paintings. Suddenly she said: "This mirror is loose.”

It was a small antique looking glass, maybe thirty centimetres square, above the table on which she had opened the letters. March grasped the ormolu frame. It gave a little but would not come away from the wall.

Try this.” She gave him the knife.

She was right. Two-thirds down the left-hand side, behind the lip of the frame, was a tiny lever. March pressed it with the tip of the paper knife, and felt something yield. The mirror was on a hinge. It swung open to reveal the safe.

He inspected it and swore. The key was not enough. There was also a combination lock.

“Too much for you?” she asked.

“ ‘In adversity,’ ” quoted March, “ ‘the resourceful officer will always discover opportunity.’ ” He picked up the telephone.

EIGHT

Across a distance of five thousand kilometres, President Kennedy flashed his famous smile. He stood behind a cluster of microphones, addressing a crowd in a football stadium. Banners of red, white and blue streamed behind him — “Re-elect Kennedy!” Tour More in Sixty-Four!” He shouted something March did not understand and the crowd cheered back.

“What is he talking about?”

The television cast a blue glow in the darkness of Stuckart’s apartment. The woman translated. “ ‘The Germans have their system and we have ours. But we are all citizens of one planet. And as long as our two nations remember that, I sincerely believe: we can have peace.’ Cue loud applause from dumb audience.”

She had kicked off her shoes and was lying full-length on her stomach in front of the set.

“Ah. Here’s the serious bit.” She waited until he finished speaking, then translated again. “He says he plans to raise human rights questions during his visit in the Fall.” She laughed and shook her head. “God, Kennedy is so full of shit. The only thing he really wants to raise is his vote in November.”

“ "Human rights"?”

“The thousands of dissidents you people lock up in camps. The millions of Jews who vanished in the war. The torture. The killing. Sorry to mention them, but we have this bourgeois notion that human beings have rights. Where have you been the last twenty years?”

The contempt in her voice jolted him. He had never properly spoken to an American before, had only encountered the occasional tourist — and those few had been chaperoned around the capital, shown only what the Propaganda Ministry wanted them to see, like Red Cross officials on a KZ inspection. Listening to her now it occurred to him she probably knew more about his country’s recent history than he did. He felt he should make some sort of defence but did not know what to say.

“You talk like a politician,” was all he could manage. She did not even bother to reply.

He looked again at the figure on the screen. Kennedy projected an image of youthful vigour, despite his spectacles and balding head.

“Will he win?” he asked.

She was silent. For a moment, he thought she had decided not to speak to him. Then she said: “He will now. He looks in good shape for a man of seventy-five, wouldn’t you say?”